על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ב י׳On the Special Laws, Book II 10
א׳
1[39] The next head is concerned with the sacred seventh day. Under this head are included a great number of matters of vital importance, the different kinds of feasts; the release in the seventh year of persons who were naturally free but through times of adversity are in servitude; the charity shown by creditors to debtors in cancelling loans to their fellow-nationals, this also in the seventh year; the rest allowed both in the lowlands and the uplands to the fertile soil at intervals of six years; and the laws laid down with respect to the fiftieth year. The mere recital of all these is enough to make the naturally gifted perfect in virtue without any effort on their part and to produce some degree of obedience in the rebellious and hard-natured.
ב׳
2[40] Now the part played by seven among the numbers has been described at length in an earlier place, where we have discussed the properties which it possesses within the decad, and its close connexion with ten itself and with four, which is the origin and source of ten. Also we have shewn how a sevenfold addition of successive numbers beginning with unity produces twenty-eight, a perfect number, equal to the sum of its factors; again, how when brought into a geometrical progression, it produces simultaneously a square and a cube, besides the numberless other beautiful results which the study of it reveals. On these numerical points we must not linger at the present juncture, but we must examine each specific subject which lies before us included under the general head, beginning with the first; and the first subject, as we saw, is the feasts.